Chapter 8: Eleven Steps

By the time Aveline reached the main stair, half the palace was standing around it.

Perdita lay at the bottom, in the same yellow gown, with one arm flung out.

A thin line of blood ran from her lip to her chin.

Two ladies knelt beside her, and a physician was feeling her wrist.

Perdita's eyes fluttered open when Aveline's slippers appeared at the top.

"Her," she said, in a thread of voice. "It was her."

Every head turned.

Aveline stood at the top step with a dozen lords and ladies staring up at her.

It was the scene from chapter nine.

She had read it on the train.

She had thought, what a stupid woman, to be caught with the heroine at the bottom of a stair.

Now she was the stupid woman, and the stair was real.

It was a steep flight of grey stone.

"I was at the top," Perdita whispered. "She came up behind me. I felt her hands on my back."

"Lady Perdita," said Aveline. "When?"

"Just now."

"I was with the Queen. In her morning room. With five witnesses."

"You came by the stair first," Perdita said, and sobbed. "Before you went in. I begged you to stop and you struck me."

It was good.

It was a clean, quick patch over the hole in her story.

Behind the crowd, the Chancellor pushed forward, breathing hard, with the Queen at his shoulder.

"Shocking," said Lord Crale. "Shocking. A defenseless girl."

"My lord," Aveline said. "May I speak to the boy?"

"What boy?"

She had seen him already, shrinking against the wall near the bottom step, with a broom clutched in both hands.

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